Dissing the group who snubbed him last year, the AFP reports on Penn at a press conference:
“The best way to be honest is to try to emancipate ourselves from the effects of fashion, to try to find what will stay with us forever,” he said in an interview with French daily Le Monde.
“We’ve got to do the opposite of the Academy that gives out the Oscars, where manipulation and very good marketing are rewarded,” said the 47-year-old US actor leading the nine-strong jury who will decide the winning entry on Sunday.
Penn, who won an Oscar for best actor in 2004 for his performance in Clint Eastwood’s drama “Mystic River,” said it had been a very good year for films at Cannes.
He only regretted that “there weren’t a few more comedies in competition” — a wry reference to the predominantly dark fare at the 61st edition of the festival.
Last year’s Oscars were anything but the result of manipulation and marketing. And no film was marketed better than Into the Wild, truth be told, except maybe There Will Be Blood, which wasn’t marketed by the studio so much as by Paul Thomas Anderson himself who kept it quiet early on, got it where it needed and created excitement and mystery around it. The No Country marketing was fairly straight forward and that film would have won no matter what they’d done, as The Departed would have won the previous year. I suppose both campaigns were restrained, as opposed to a shouting campaign but still – Into the Wild got the best marketing around and it didn’t mean squat in the end. Go figure.
No Response for "Penn and the Oscars"
I’ve always sort of disliked Mr. Penn. He seems awfully pretentious. He is a decent actor, but most of his opinions are normally unfounded (sort of like the one above). When people preside over voting there is bound to be an incident of “manipulation”. However, it is not always the case that there is going to be manipulation.
It is no secret to anyone that the “campaign” is absolutely indispensable and key to Oscar success, thus undermining the value and significance of the Academy Awards.
Perhaps Mr. Penn was indirectly referring to the infamous commando-campaign staged by Lionsgate a few years ago to push their preachy and clichéd race-horse Crash which was nothing more than a pretentious made-for-TV-movie that unjustly walked away with the highest honour at the Oscars ahead of the exceptional and history-making Brokeback Mountain (named Best Picture over 30 times by various organizations, groups and guilds around the world). Take away the “campaign & manipulation/marketing” factor, and Crash was not even on the radar – there is no arguing with that. Crash had had a very modest box office, had gotten only a lukewarm reception from critics, and had long sunk into oblivion. It simply suited Hollywood to have a last minute alternative to the groundbreaking Brokeback Mountain and Crash represented the home team. In this case, manipulation and strategic marketing did pay off big time!
I therefore tend to agree with Mr. Penn, at least in this case.
We perfectly know what he meant….
Sean Penn is one of the more respectable american figures around the world, and, if he tells bullshit, the world is agree with him….
I can not tell the same for american academy….
Sorry, but you can not do anything out of US, If he tells whatever, we believe him.
Regards.
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